Facebook advertising revenue reached $3.15 billion in 2011, representing an increase of almost 69% from $1.87 billion in 2010, and more than tripling from $764 million in 2009, according to the February 2012 prospectus it filed in conjunction with its initial public offering (IPO).

The $3.15 billion in advertising revenue equaled 85% of the social network’s $3.71 billion in 2011 revenues, with the remaining $557 million derived from payments and other fees revenue, more than quadruple the $106 million derived from those sources in 2010. The proportion of 2011 revenue accounted for by advertising was down from 95% (of $1.97 billion) in 2010 and 98% (of $777 million) in 2009. Read More »

54% of global IT and business professionals say that their iPad has partly replaced their laptop, while a further 16% say it has completely replaced their laptop, according to [download page] a survey released in January 2012 by IDG Connect. Adoption of the iPad has also curtailed usage of other devices: 43% say it has partly replaced their smartphone, while about one-third say it has partly replaced their PC, TV/DVD player, and MP3 player. Just 28% say the iPad has partly replaced their games console. Read More »

57% of US consumers say that they are increasingly checking product labels to see what company is behind the product they are buying, and the same proportion say they get annoyed when it is not obvious what company is behind a product, according to survey results released in January 2012 by Weber Shandwick. Roughly 2 in 5 US consumers also say they hesitate to buy a product when it is not clear what company makes them, and that they do research to learn about the companies that make the product they buy. Read More »

The US (16.8%) will fall behind China (18.8%) in online market share by 2015, according to Translated’s December 2011 T-Index, a statistical index that determines the online market share per country by combining the internet population and the corresponding GDP per capita.

The US boasted the largest T-Index in 2011, at 24.4%, ahead of China (11.5%), Japan (6.6%), Germany (4.9%), and the UK (3.7%). Read More »

Social networking ranked as the most popular online content category in worldwide engagement in October 2011, accounting for almost 1 in every 5 minutes spent online, up from just 6% of time spent online in March 2007, according to [download page] a report released in December 2011 by comScore. Time spent on social networking sites gained ground during that time primarily by taking share from web-based email and instant messengers. Read More »

Discovering good values for your money is rated as “very influential” in shopping at a particular retailer by a slightly higher percentage of global consumers than a store having the lowest prices overall, according to a survey released by The Nielsen Company in October 2011. Results from “Shopping and Saving Strategies Around the World” indicate that 61% of global online consumers rated good value, compared to 58% who rated low price, as the most influential reason to shop at a particular retailer.

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While the US will still maintain a comfortable lead in ad spending in 2013, number three China’s spending will surge in the next two years, according to [pdf] an October 2011 forecast from Zenith Optimedia. China, expected to spend $26.1 billion USD on major media advertising this year, will increase that figure almost 49% to $38.5 billion in 2013.
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Despite overall growth of 5.7% for the global advertising industry in Q2 2011, ad spending fell in nearly half the world’s key markets in Q2 2011, according to The Nielsen Company’s quarterly Global AdView Pulse report. Nielsen reported that advertising revenue dropped in Q2 in 16 out of 36 global markets, marking the first significant decline since the Q3 2009 report when ad spend fell in more than half the markets monitored at the height of the global recession.
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A look at the top social networking brands worldwide released by comScore in September 2011 revealed that, perhaps unsurprisingly, Facebook.com ranked as the top social network by a wide margin. In June 2011, 734.2 million people visited Facebook.com globally, an increase of 33% from the previous year.
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Globally, only eight in 10 (81%) commercial emails reached their intended inbox in the first half of 2011, according to a study released in September 2011 by ReturnPath. Results from “The Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report” indicate the remaining roughly one in five emails that do not reach the inbox wind up either in a spam/junk folder (7%) or are blocked by ISP-level filtering (12%).
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